


Back to Back

by qwanderer



Series: Midnight Mystery [18]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationship, Gen, Partnership, Trust, Tumblr, darcy is one of us, mentions of other characters and relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There isn't anyone else in the world who Clint can relax around.</p>
<p>And maybe that's not such a great thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to Back

Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff are partners. They have been for a long time, so they're solid. Their partnership is the solid ground in the mire that is their lives. 

It's nothing new to either of them, this distrust of the world, everything in it, and worst of all, themselves. It's nothing new, but it's always going to be terrible. It would be unbearable, if not for the other. They trust each other, and it's great having someone you can always trust, but what's even more essential is having someone who will always trust you. 

They live back-to-back because the world hasn't been good to them. It's been slippery and deceptive and treacherous, a labyrinth full of ooze-covered rocks and traps. 

Right now they're sitting back-to-back on top of the huge stainless steel refrigerator in the Avengers' common kitchen, eating two halves of the same sandwich - it's got turkey and cheese and lettuce and some kind of spiced marinated vegetable, Clint isn't sure what. But anyway Natasha procured it somewhere and she's eating her half happily enough, so he bites into the triangle in his hand, chewing, thoughtful and contented and relaxed. 

There's nobody else who can make him feel at home, not since Coulson. 

Not since Loki. 

And the only reason he can sit here like this right now and relax in the common rooms is that half the Avengers up and took the Bifrost to go meet Loki's kid on her own planet, or something equally strange. Loki's far away, Thor and Tony and Bruce with him, along with Jane and the newlyweds Steve and Lady Sif. Darcy's been complaining that she's bored and the tower is horribly empty, but Clint likes it this way, just him and Nat and Darcy and Peter. 

And Darcy's gotten pretty good at the whole sorcery thing; the number of accidents have dropped off drastically and the number of times she's used her magic to heal him or save him from falling have built up until he can almost relax around her, have fun playing video games or something with the four of them, and almost forget that she's Loki's apprentice and new best buddy. 

Peter's a good kid but he's so young; he's only been an Avenger a couple of months now and he still has a tendency to act on his own instead of following Cap's lead. 

Well, he's not actually the only one. 

Clint likes him. 

Cap's solid enough - and Coulson liked him, so that's a plus - but the others.... 

Well, it all leads back to Loki. 

Thor will always have a soft spot for his brother. Tony is in _love_ with the blue bastard, and Clint's never agreed more with Natasha's stance on that. Love is idealistic and blind and _stupid,_ things that will get you killed. Clint can never quite let his guard down around people crazy enough to love Loki. 

Loki himself...the blue guy has been a good ally, but there are some things you can't forget. 

Bruce is where things get complicated. He's a good guy, he's got sense. He's got...softness without weakness. But he's...Clint doesn't know exactly how to put it. To Bruce, Tony and Loki are _family._

And then there's the fact that Natasha is unequivocally _terrified_ of the Hulk. 

Yeah, it's complicated. 

Clint sighs. 

"Hey, what's up?" Natasha asks him, nudging his shoulder from her perch on the other half of the refrigerator. She's finished her half of the sandwich in the time it's taken him to get through three bites. She smiles ruefully at him, and he smiles unwillingly back. 

"D'you trust Bruce?" he asks, before taking another huge bite of his sandwich. 

"Well enough," she says. "But that's not really what you want to talk about." 

Clint grimaces through his mouthful of turkey sandwich. 

"You brought it up, you big baby. So start talking." 

Clint swallows his bite, then turns his head fractionally in her direction. 

"You remember when we moved in, how Bruce was always ready to run? How careful he was?" 

"Yeah." She nods. "I saw it." 

He shakes his head, a tiny almost-motion. "I got that. I really got that. But I can't get why _he_ trusts _Loki._ " 

She turns her head to the side, observing him. "This isn't about me, or Bruce. This is about Loki." 

Clint frowns. "No, this... well, maybe." He jams the rest of the sandwich in his mouth to give himself time to think. 

He's made his peace with Loki, as best he knows how to. He's never quite gotten to where he thinks he could be with Bruce. He feels... shortchanged. 

"How'd he do it?" Clint asks. "How'd Loki get to him so fast? Why did Bruce trust him so easily?" 

"Because they're dangerous," Nat says, "and because the universe is full of things that could come back to bite them and people who'd like them gone." She puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. "Because they both need someone to trust them, to make life bearable." 

Clint squeezes his eyes shut. "Shit. Ok," he says. "Ok. I can respect that." 

"But?" she asks. 

She knows him better than he knows himself, sometimes. 

"But if that's what that is...and I want to get past it...." He rubs one hand over his neck anxiously. "Then maybe you're right. Maybe this is about me and Loki." 

He sighs again. 

"So what do I do about that?" 

They sit, back-to-back, in silence for a while. 

"Coffffeeeee...." comes a voice from the kitchen below. 

One thing Clint respects about Darcy is that she's observant, and she doesn't forget to look up. 

After she gets her coffee, and she's cradling it in her hands and slurping it luxuriously, she glances up and says, "Hey guys." 

"You do know it's past noon, right?" Clint asks. 

"Caffeine addiction does not adhere to a set schedule. Also, I was up all night on Tumblr. They're still grieving the tragic death of Captain America's virginity." 

Clint snorts. 

"They all want to know if you two are together, too. I've been trying to figure it out, which I'm usually good at, but I just _can't tell._ You two are driving me insane with this whole 'more-than-best-buds' thing you have going. So I'm just going to ask. Is there sex? Or no?" 

The assassins glance at each other. 

"Why does it matter?" Natasha says, her inflection giving nothing away. 

Darcy looks at them with narrowed eyes. 

"You do it on purpose, don't you? Being inscrutable. It's all a conspiracy. A 'drive-Darcy-absolutely-bonkers-wondering' conspiracy." 

Clint says nothing, but leans back slightly so his shoulder is resting against Tasha's again. He smiles, enigmatic and amused. 

Darcy makes a face at him. 

He takes pity on her...sort of. "I don't suppose you'd believe me if I said it actually doesn't matter?" 

"Nope," she says. "Not for a second. Plus, what would that even mean? Sex _always_ matters. It matters to the _fans._ We need to know if you two are available, so we can have our daydream delusions in the confidence that they're remotely possible." She bobs her head in agreement with herself as she rummages in the refrigerator for cream cheese. Then she looks hard at him again. "So what's the word? Are you on the lookout for someone to share your huge, lonely, superhero-y bed? Or are you taken care of?" 

Clint just chuckles quietly and shakes his head. "Those are the only two options?" 

Natasha turns her head to whisper in his ear. It doesn't even matter what she's saying; the joke is in the motion, in its look, in its possible interpretations. Clint's body shakes with the laughter, and Tasha, against him, is laughing too. 

Darcy slams the refrigerator door with frustrated indignation, and it vibrates under them. 

"Fine, keep your secrets," she says, but she can't stay angry with them and smirks up at their quiet laughter. "Maybe when Peter gets back from school I can pry more Spiderman love life gossip out of him." 

Back-to-back with Tasha, Clint feels at home. That's all he needs; that's all that matters. He doesn't think he could begin to explain that to Darcy. So he doesn't try. 

* * *

"You vouched for Loki. When we went to Asgard. I thought you and he were okay." 

Clint sits scrunched up in the corner of the sofa in Tasha's rooms. Clint likes to observe people and learn about them. He's less comfortable with people observing him, learning about him. But the only one here is Tasha. So he scrunches down like a frightened animal. 

He takes the hot cocoa she hands him, absently turning the mug in his hands before sipping it and putting it down. 

"We are," he says eventually. "He's a good ally. I like him. I don't have a problem working with him." 

"So what's bothering you?" she asks, sitting next to him, taking his hand in hers and rubbing the back of it comfortingly with her thumb. 

"I miss Phil," he says. 

Tasha's hand tightens around his briefly. 

"It's all right if you don't forgive him," she said. "Loki took so much from you, and if you're not okay with that, no one can blame you." 

He screws his eyes shut. 

"Every time I wake up, Tasha. Every time I wake up I remember waking up on the Helicarrier, thinking about everything I did, everything he made me do. Everything I helped him do." 

She doesn't fill the silence with anything but her presence, comforting, encouraging. 

"I thought time would fix it. And it's getting better, it is. It's just... two years, Nat. Two years, and every time Loki so much as coughs, I'm on alert. It's tiring." 

"I can't help you with that," Natasha says, and she sounds ever so slightly lost. "I'm always on alert. With all of them." 

"Everyone?" 

"Everyone except you." 

He smiles, glad to be whatever he is to her. "You're my touchstone, too," he says. "Partner. Trust you like I trust my bow. You keep me balanced. That's why I need to know how you feel about Bruce." 

"Clint, what is this about? Really?" She looks to him, piercingly. 

He takes a minute, figuring out how to phrase this. "If I found someone else, what would you do? Because you know I won't leave you in the lurch. But I'm tired of being afraid." 

"What are you talking about." 

"Natasha, how do you feel about Bruce, because I need to be your safe place, no matter who else I trust." 

She looks at him, eyes wide and maybe a little blank as she processes. "You don't just want to work better with Bruce. You want...." She was lost for words. 

"I want to start feeling at home in more places than here." He gestures between them, indicating both her rooms and the space that exists between the two of them. 

"Why Bruce?" she asks. 

Clint looks at her, squinting a little. "I'm not sure," he says. "All I know is he's... not soft, he understands the world, but he still feels warm, like family. I don't know, does that make sense?" 

"Yeah, I think it does," she says, giving him a look that isn't quite a smile, but reads like one to him. "I'll tell you what I think about Bruce, then," she says. "He can't be manipulated. He can't be _used._ " She pressed her lips together. "My skills are all about using the target's own strength against them. Bruce is a force of nature; his strength can't be turned. It will always, _always_ be used for self-preservation. And that's not a bad thing. It frightens me, but if you're going to trust someone, you could do worse." 

"Are you going to be good with that?" he asks, frowning into his cocoa. 

"I won't let him stop me," she says. "Being afraid of him is my problem and I can't hide behind this. That would be the surest way of being compromised." 

Clint nods. "It's the same with Loki, I guess. None of this is your problem to fix. You respect Tony, no matter how much the two of you play the insult game. And Loki? Joshua? You vouched for him first. Breaking free of what's expected of you is something you can relate to. So you're waiting for me. You resent him because of me. Because I needed you to. Am I right?" 

She inclines her head. Then she looks at him for a minute before she says, "You don't have to let this go." 

"But I want to." 

She listens. 

"This is eating up my life and running isn't going to help." 

"What do you need?" 

"I don't know," Clint says. "Just time, I think. But I'm impatient." 

She smiles. "Sometimes. Not when it's important." 

"You don't have to keep hating him just because I can't relax around him. that's my thing to deal with." 

She nods reluctantly. "Then how about this. We watch each other's backs, but we don't defend each other from every scratch. Not anymore." 

Clint doesn't know what this is going to mean for them, but he hopes things will get better. He hopes they don't need to use each other as crutches anymore. He hopes that the next time one of them falls, the other will still be there. 

* * *

Terror. Cold terror, the kind she is not used to feeling because there is always a way out of every situation - she can manipulate anybody. Anybody but these forces of nature who will not be turned aside from their rage for anything. 

She's cornered. Flux's uneven body looms over her, and his huge fist draws back to strike. Clint's voice is in her ear, telling her he's coming, but it's not gonna be in time - 

An arrow hits with a soft _thwap_ , an injector, but she knows very well that most sedatives won't work on gamma monsters. She braces for the blow. 

But Flux croaks, falling in on himself, shrinking down to Benjamin Tibbits, and that she can deal with - he looks at her in a desperate way that she recognizes very well, that she can use, and she is back in control again. 

* * *

She's in medical when she lets herself feel the terror again, just a little sliver of it, because Clint is there and she's allowed to take a breath. 

"How'd you do it? How'd you take him down?" she asks. 

Clint takes out a handful of arrowheads, silver with blue markings and a blue plastic cap over their tips. He runs his thumb over the letters on one of them. MRB. 

"Bruce gave me these, but he swore me to secrecy. Said the research he took these from might still be out there, and the man who did the first trials had a lot of his blood. He doesn't want anyone to be able to trace it back and find that research. So I swore, but I was thinkin' of telling you anyway." Clint looks vaguely guilty as he says this, and Natasha can't be sure what about, the keeping it from her or the almost not. Probably both. 

"You were there," she says. "You were there to catch me, and that's what counts. This is us. This is our new thing." 

He looks her in the eyes, hard, to see if she's really all right with this. The tiny frown between her eyebrows, the tiny smile at the corner of her mouth, both say, 'Hey. I'm not fragile. We've dealt with it, now let's move on.' So he does. 

He smirks at her and says, "Don't laze around for too long. Peter's an annoying as hell sparring partner. Haven't got a hit in on him yet." 

"And you won't get one on me, either, when I'm back in the ring tomorrow," she answers, and yes, it's a challenge. He's not worried about her any more. 

And even though he's got a lot of shit to deal with, he's not worried about himself anymore either. He's gonna take his jump, and if he doesn't make his mark, Nat will be there to catch him. 

Every time. 


End file.
